Cancer is a primary cause for mortality of Japanese, and it is said that if early treatment by early diagnosis is possible, the mortality can be remarkably decreased.
Currently, diagnosis of cancer is performed by discriminating a normal cell and a cancer cell by a morphological test of a cell in a test sample collected from a subject with microscopic examination generally by a cell testing technician. However, since this diagnosis method is a visual test by a cell testing technician, the method is not suitable for handling of a large amount of test samples as in group medical examinations, and there is a problem that unevenness occurs in test results depending on the status of a test sample, and the sample cannot be analyzed quantitatively.
In addition, a method for diagnosing cancer by detecting a tumor-derived DNA in plasma and serum of a subject is also being studied. Specifically, cancer is diagnosed by concentrating cells contained in blood collected from a subject, and biochemically analyzing a DNA and the like related to a blood free cancer cell in the concentrated cells. This method can relatively safely treat a large amount of test samples, but there is a problem that a step of concentrating blood free cancer cells is difficult, and simplicity is lacked.
On the other hand, in recent years, an anti-cancer agent (US2006239967) and a cancer cell detection reagent (US2006067890) using an oncolytic virus which specifically grows in a cancer cell are reported. The oncolytic virus is a virus which specifically grows in a cancer cell and, by infecting a cancer cell with the virus, the cancer cell can be directly destroyed and killed and, by incorporating a gene of a target protein into a genome thereof, it becomes possible to simply detect a cancer cell.
However, since the oncolytic virus has infectivity also on a normal cell apart from simple detection of a cancer cell, a facility at a P2 level becomes necessary for the detection. Therefore, there is a problem that it is difficult to actually use the virus in group medical examinations or the like.